I do not ordinarily keep to-do lists outside of work. At work,
after opening shop according to the usual routine, the first order of the day is
always the to-do list which I indelicately scrawl in a series of smudgy bullet-points
in a notebook that is really too pretty to deserve such ill-treatment (not that
ugliness pardons ill-treatment; pity the fairy-tale dupe who fails to treat the
snaggle-toothed crone as respectfully as the inevitable Venus she conceals). At
work, the to-do list is a necessary corrective to my otherwise day-dreamy proclivities; without it I would run the risk of, well, of being as
I am when I am not at work.
To order my non-work time by a to-do list, on the
other hand, would seem like a category error. At work it is necessary for me to
be a machine to a certain extent (albeit one overseen by a stridently human
soul, an Anthropos-ex-Machina as it were). At work I must be the instrument by
which certain things get done; away from work, I must be anything but a machine.
Away from work, my fullest attention must be on developing my humanity, my
soul, and while this development may (indeed, probably always does) take the
form of particular activities, to think of those activities as activities (i.e.
as things “to do”) would be to turn soul-development into a variety of
self-improvement seminar, something that involved completing a certain number
of assignments to a certain standard before being handed one’s certificate and going on one’s way to pursue other activities. Perish the
thought!
Yet today, a non-work day, I have broken my rule and have written
a to-do list. I excuse myself in part because my primary reason for writing
said list was to ensure I didn’t end up being a bad friend through forgetfulness.
I am notoriously hopeless at maintaining punctual communication with the people
I love, in no small part because I feel those people deserve more than boilerplate fripperies on every occasion, no matter how trifling, and so I can’t reply to
even the simplest text message without at least fifteen minutes' pause to
consider the most considerate response (despite the fact that the most
considerate response is often the unconsidered, immediate one). On account of
this lack of punctuality, I end up with a backlog of messages on one medium or
another, and then I forget to reply at all. Thus today’s list. And yet I failed
to stop there. Although it is true that most of today's list consists of “text
so-and-so” and “call such-and-such”, other items have ended up slipping in also: “Vacuum
room”, “Finish Typography Book”, “Read something by Chesterton”, “Write blog
post”. I suppose, in my present state of
mental wellness, I have been feeling strong enough to overcome the lure of completion-for-completion’s-sake
(or, more accurately, completion-for-check-mark’s-sake). Herein lies hubris. Not unamalgamated hubris, but I admit I did end up approaching Chesterton as a
task to be accomplished, and not, as he deserved, as a friend to be enjoyed or
a teacher to be minded. (Of course, it is impossible to treat Chesterton entirely
as a means to a check mark; there will always be points at which he breaks
through one's utilitarian trance and biffs one, as one quite rightly deserves, on the metaphorical nose).
It is now late afternoon. This was not the post I intended
to write. That post was on the article on Panpsychism, the reading of which
also finagled its way onto the to-do list. That post shall have to wait (or pone? as in postpone?). The order of the afternoon is to walk. This too is on
the list, but it is also on the heart (and, hummty-tum, the sole), and so can’t be
wounded by a bullet-point.
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